


cutting my heart, burning my soul

by SiderumInCaelo



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Ficlet, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Movie 2: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 01:07:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20055535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiderumInCaelo/pseuds/SiderumInCaelo
Summary: Leta hurts herself, sometimes.





	cutting my heart, burning my soul

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song "Blood and Fire" by the Indigo Girls.

It starts as an accident. She’s distracted in Potions class one day, and her hand drifts close, too close, to the blue flames under the cauldron. She wrenches it away instinctively but the damage is done, pain searing across her palm and blisters disfiguring her skin.

She’s hurried to the hospital wing and her hand is soon good as new, thanks to some burn salve. But as she walks back to class, her head once again full of racing, unpleasant thoughts, she finds she misses the distraction of an injury, just a little.

Still, it’s not like she means to repeat the experience – she’s not _crazy_, despite what the other students say about her. But when everything gets too much, when students whisper cruel things behind her back, she can’t help but dig her fingernails into her palm, hard enough to leave marks, or bite her lip until it bleeds. And it helps, enough that she keeps doing it.

So when Corvus’s birthday catches her by surprise, and she spends the whole day hating herself, feeling trapped inside her own skin, it seems only obvious to find a secluded corner, dig her knife out of her potions kit, and cut into her arm.

It’s an indulgence, because when she’s cutting the world narrows down to sharp, clean pain and vivid blood, with everything else falling away. But it’s an indulgence she can allow herself because it’s also a punishment, even if she knows no number of wounds could come close to what she deserves.


End file.
